I first got into wargaming / playing with toy soldiers / making models when I was very young, which was many years ago, it all started when I got my first box of Airfix HO scale Napoleonic Scottish Highlanders and a box of French infantry to fight them.

I was lucky, in that my bedroom had a green carpet on the floor which meant that I had a large battlefield right beneath my feet! I spent many hours with those first two boxes of figures playing out my own ( albeit simple ) version of the battle of Waterloo, I didn’t have any rules ( I didn’t know there were such things ) I just lined them up in battle lines and rolled marbles at them, over the next few years the battle lines grew and included many more figures and now with artillery and cavalry, I even started to paint them ( badly ) using small tins of Humbrol enamels.

Then I saw that there were also model kits for planes and tanks and that was it I was totally lost, I spent all my pocket money on those kits and made everything I could, there wasn’t a great deal of choice back then in the small model shop where I lived, but I got as many as I could and started to have bigger and better battles on that green carpet, this time fighting out my version of WW2 and finally starting to use very simple rules including rolling dice instead of marbles!

Well a few things have changed over the years ( except my bad painting! ) I play most of my games now on a wargaming table, and I use proper rule sets, and the figures and kits have moved on and are a lot more expensive, but I do still have a few Airfix kits in my 20mm WW2 collection which still look good.

I have branched out into many more eras and genres of wargames since those early days, the list is very long, these include to name just a few – Ancients, ACW, Vietnam, WW2, Steampunk, and Sci-fi.

And then there are all the scales of the figures! – 6mm, 15mm, 20mm and 28mm.

Then there are all the wargaming rule books! As I type this I am looking at all my rule books ( and PDF print outs ) lined up along their shelves, all regimental like, and think to myself damn I have far to many!!

I have read them all but sadly I have only played games using about half of them, I just love rules systems and reading them, I think that I am trying to find that holy grail of wargaming rules, that is probably not out there.

I also play many wargames “solo” although I am a member of a club where I can always get a game I find that I have far to many evenings when I am able to play but don’t have a handy partner for a game, because of this I have found that lots of games work well with only one player, there are also many games out there that are designed for just one player.

Over the last few years I have even turned my hand to rules writing, starting with a very simple spaceship combat game which has lead to two others so far, oh and a couple more floating around inside my head!!

So there you have it, a short condensed history of me and my hobby so far….

Within the pages of this blog I will try and show some of the things that I enjoy about this hobby and hopefully you will enjoy them a little as well.

Welcome to my little wargaming worlds.

Mac